Ethnobotany of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians: A Path to Sustaining Traditional Identity with an Emphasis on Medicinal Plant Use

This book examines the roles of plants in context of the lives of the Eastern Band of Cherokee Indians (EBCI), with an emphasis on the use of plants in medicine. The ECBI are a Native American tribe who live in part of their ancestral homelands of the Southern Appalachians located in the southwest corner of North Carolina. Throughout time, plants have fulfilled many roles in Cherokee society that have become interwoven with their traditional identity. This research, driven by needs articulated by the Cherokee, seeks to provide a potential path through which they might sustain their traditional identity, specifically that portion which deals with the use of plants for medicine. The unique contribution of this work is the synthesis of the expert voices of the Cherokee healers in such a way that the context of the knowledge is preserved electronically, thus providing a valuable resource for sustaining identity.